Linux is increasingly capable of meeting all yourhome computing needs, even the needs ofyour household’s youngest members. As theopen-source software movement grows (andthe open-source software developers’ familiesgrow), the number of kid-oriented programsincreases. One of these is Tux Paint, a drawingprogram with a wealth of features (and a dashof education) to entice and engage users notready for the powerful but complex graphicsprogram, The GIMP.

Tux Paint was designed to be self-contained, soyour little ones can draw for hours without making amess of your files or your kitchen table (your mouseand keyboard are another story). Tux the Penguinguides children in your choice of more than 40 languages, providing gentle prompts, positive feed-back and educational tidbits. Sound effects, stampsand a variety of “magic” effects elevate an other-wise solid paint program into a kid magnet. And, likeany good Linux program, it’s highly configurable.

INSTALLATIONTux Paint has been packaged for many popularLinux distributions and is also available for MacOS X and Windows. Users of the Debian,Fedora, Red Hat or Slackware Linux distributionscan download Tux Paint and use their favoritepackage manager to install it. Being an open-

source project, the source code is also availablefor the more ambitious user, of course. (Seehttp://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/download for details.)

Tux Paint requires a number of support libraries:the Simple DirectMedia Layer library (libSDL); someSDL-based support libraries (SDL_image, SDL_ttfand SDL_mixer); FreeType2; gettext; and libPNG.All of these should be readily available for, if notalready installed on, your Linux system.

Once installed, you should be able to accessTux Paint from your Start menu’s Graphics applica-tion menu. For those who are command-linesavvy, simply type tuxpaint at a commandprompt to launch the program.

CONFIGURATIONConfiguration of Tux Paint is isolated from theprogram itself to keep curious little fingers frommonkeying with your carefully selected settings.The Tux Paint Config tool requires the Fast/LightToolkit (FLTK), which may or may not be a sepa-rate package, depending on your distribution. Theconfiguration tool is a point-and-click interfacethat allows you to choose the language Tux Paintuses, set its screen size and enable or disablesuch options as sound, printing, full-screenmode and so on. If the configuration toolTuxpaint-Config doesn’t show up on your

KDE/GNOME/whatever menu, start it from thecommand line (or press Alt-F2 to run a com-mand) by typing tuxpaint-config.

The number of settings may seem overwhelm-ing, but each was added (often at the request ofparents and teachers) to meet the needs of a vari-ety of users. By changing the options, Tux Paint canbe made appropriate for very young users, userswith learning disabilities and students in the class-room. Tux Paint Config was designed to be as easyon parents as Tux Paint is on kids, so each settingoption is explained and should be fairly intuitive.

Once you’ve set the options you want, simplyclick Apply to save the changes, and restart TuxPaint. The settings apply only to the current user,so if you give each child a separate login, yourfourth grader need not be limited by the samerestrictions as your pre-schooler.

Like most programs you’ll find on Linux, youalso can specify settings when running Tux Paintfrom the command line. For example, typingtuxpaint --nosound --fullscreen runs TuxPaint with sound disabled and in full-screen mode.

It is also possible to create a system-wideconfiguration, but this requires root access andthe skills to edit a plain-text configuration file,and is therefore somewhat beyond the scopeof this article. See Tux Paint’s documentationfor more details.

Tux Paint for KidsTux Paint provides mess-free creativity for your little Linux users.

BY WILLIAM KENDRICK AND MELISSA HARDENBROOK

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ADVANCED FEATURESAnyone who ever has used a paint program will feel at home with TuxPaint’s fundamentals. You choose a colour and one of several tools (Linetool, Text tool, Paint tool and so forth), a brush size and shape and acolour. You can erase mistakes with the Eraser tool, and last-minutedesign changes are easy with the Undo and Redo buttons, or you canscrap the project entirely with the New button. You can print the finishedmasterpieces with a single click—unless you disable printing, of course.

There are also a number of less basic features, a few of which may not bereadily obvious, even to parents.

SHAPE TOOLFor the stickler who insists on perfect polygons, the Shape tool provides out-lines and filled shapes like rectangles, triangles, ellipses and circles (okay, thecircles aren’t perfect). As with other tools, simply choose the shape and the

colour and click. Follow the directions Tux gives to resize and rotate theshape (shape rotation is one of those features that you may want to disablefor younger users).

MAGIC TOOLWhen you choose this tool from the menu on the left, it opens a Magicmenu on the right with a variety of special effects. Some, like Blur, Chalkand Blocks, are artistic effects. Others, like Fill, Mirror and Flip, workexactly like similar tools in any other paint program—fill an area withcolour, reverse the image left to right and flip the image upside-down.

Each effect is labeled clearly with the effect name and an illustrativeicon. Tux the Penguin, as usual, also provides useful instructions.

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Figure 1. Tux Paint Conifg Dialog

Figure 2. Tux Paint’s Shape Tool

STAMP TOOLOne of Tux Paint’s best-loved features is its Stamp tool. Choosing this toolbrings up the Stamps menu on the right, and a choice of more than 200images to paste into the drawing, just like a sticker. However, Tux Paint’sstamps allow greater freedom than real stickers. You can reverse stamps,flip them upside-down and make them smaller or larger. If the colourpalette at the bottom of the screen becomes active, you can change thecolour of the stamp too. For younger users, you can disable the resizingand the reversal/flipping functions with Tux Paint Config.

Because Tux Paint stamps rely on common formats, it is possible to editexisting stamps. Stamps are stored in the popular Portable Network Graphic(PNG) format, which can be loaded and edited in applications like The GIMP.Stamp sound effects, stored in WAV format, also can be edited. The descrip-

tion of the stamp and various settings (such as whether you can change thestamp’s colour) are stored in plain-text files.

It is also possible to add entirely new stamps, though the technical detailsof this are beyond the scope of this article. The more ambitious user will findthe process is covered extensively in Tux Paint’s documentation.

OPENING AND SAVING FILESBecause the typical three-year-old has neither the interest in your filesystemnor the intellectual power to comprehend it, the process of saving, openingand deleting files has been simplified.

Unlike most other computer programs, there is no Save As stage, that is,Tux Paint does not ask what the file should be called or in which directory itshould be saved. When you click the Save button, Tux Paint automatically

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Figure 3. Tux Paint’s Magic Tool Figure 4. Tux Paint’s Stamp Tool

assigns a filename to the picture and saves it in PNG format.You can click the Open button to bring up a mini-graphical file

browser within the program. All previously saved pictures are displayedas thumbnails (strictly sans filename). You can delete or load any filefrom this browser.

Like any other file, you can access a Tux Paint picture from other pro-grams, so you can e-mail the latest masterpiece to grandma or splice it into atext document and send it to her the old-fashioned way. By default, TuxPaint saves to the .tuxpaint/saved folder in the user’s home directory. If it isprohibitively difficult to access hidden files, the default location can bechanged using Tux Paint Config.

DRAWING ON PHOTOSIt is possible to import pictures into Tux Paint, aswell. However, because Tux Paint uses a fixed canvassize and stores its pictures in PNG format, imagesfirst must be converted to PNG format, scaled andcropped, and put where Tux Paint can find them.Fortunately, there’s a tool that comes with Tux Paintto do this for you.

The command-line tool, tuxpaint-import, takes a listof images (which can be in almost any format) andmakes copies of them inside Tux Paint, in the appropri-ate size and shape.

You even can do this from the file browser inKonqueror by selecting the file(s) you want to importinto Tux Paint, right-clicking on it and selecting OpenWith→Other... in the menu that pops up. Simply typetuxpaint-import and click OK.

The next time you click the Open button in TuxPaint, the pictures should be available. And remember,these are copies, so your originals are safe!

THE FUTURE OF TUX PAINT AND YOUTux Paint’s development is ongoing, so it keeps gettingbetter and better. New features already have been created for the next release, including a number ofnew Magic tools, faster startup time, support for larger screen sizes, an improved colour palette andtranslations to six additional languages.

Tux Paint fans are encouraged to pitch in withsuggestions, bug reports, code, translations, newstamps and so forth, on Tux Paint’s two mailinglists—one for Tux Paint developers (technical andcode-related talk) and one for parents and teachers.(See http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/listsfor details and to subscribe.)�

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Figure 5. Open Existing Images with Tux Paint

William Kendrick islead developer of TuxPaint and works as acell phone videogame programmer inPalo Alto, California.

Melissa Hardenbrookis a night owl, aprodigious doodler, a sociolinguist livingin a computationallinguist’s world andMrs William Kendrick,among other things.